


What Should Have Been Said

by cteranodon



Category: Homestuck, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cteranodon/pseuds/cteranodon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk Strider has no idea how he got here or why there's a dead body two rooms down, but he has his suspicions about who put it there and expects Sherlock Holmes to help him prove them. Told from Dirk's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Should Have Been Said

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic was written as an entry in tumblr user ashiok's writing contest.

It was easy for me to believe at first that the sleeping man was the only person I could trust.

I’m no good at telling the age of a person, but if I had to guess, the one before me was in his late thirties. He was built of lean muscle, to a greater extent than I am, and his russet hair seemed to be unsure in its decision to cling to his head. And I could tell you that I found him to be a handsome person. He lay sprawling in as chaotic a manner as anyone could be, across a bed of wooly evergreen covers.

I was pacing the floor, in part out of nervousness, in part out of the selfish hope that the noise I made would wake him up, and in part to get my blood pumping, because I had no memory of arriving at that place. The last I could remember, I was playing a vital role in one step of a reality-sustaining cycle, but my apparent new abode didn’t play by the rules of any reality I had encountered. Sure, my life was bizarre before; it has never not been bizarre. But there was always logic working behind it. This place was devoid of logic.

But before I could make any progress on the front of figuring out the reason behind my plight, the sleeping man’s eyes opened, he looked around for a second, then he snapped upright, looking at me with confusion.

“Hello,” he said with a British accent.

“Hey,” I said. “Sorry if I startled you.”

“Oh, it is not you so much as a general… _confusion_ as to where I am.”

“Welcome to the club,” I said. “Right now, we’re plannin a nobody-has-any-idea-what-the-fuck-is-happening club party. Interested?”

He tossed aside the blankets and hopped out of his bed with much more zeal than I expected out of him.

“You’ve lived a very isolated life, haven’t you?” he asked.

I was taken aback. I wasn’t really bothered by the question, nor was the topic it raised something I hated to talk about much, but it was entirely true, and it was startling for the second complete sentence he spoke to me to be such an accurate assessment. “What makes you say that?” I responded after a moment.

He frowned. “Well, you’ve been maintaining constant eye contact with me since I woke up, demonstrating a certain disregard for social norms. Your fashion sense reflects no known culture or subculture. Lastly, your tattoo shows signs that it was self-applied.”

I looked self-consciously at the tattoo on my shoulder. “Something wrong with it?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” He rolled up his sleeve to show me tattoos of his own scattered about his arm. “Take it from someone else who has given himself tattoos: yours looks perfectly acceptable at first glance. However, one notices that it falls slightly off-center.”

Slightly off-center? Okay.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, extending his hand.

I took it. “Dirk Strider.”

He stepped away a few paces and began looking around the room. “So tell me everything you know about where we are and what has happened. I take it you feel as displaced as I do, but you have been awake for some time.”

“Hold up,” I said. “You say that me giving myself this ink is a sign of my isolation, but you also said you gave yourself your own tattoos.”

He let out the smallest of sighs. “I have been trained in tattoo artistry. You, I should say, are too young to have encountered such training. Even for one your age, it would be much easier to find a tattoo artist willing to sell their services to an underage man than to teach yourself the trade under normal circumstances but then your circumstances aren’t. Normal. Are. They.”

Okay, so I could respect this guy’s skills.

“Please, tell me what you know, Mr. Strider.”

“We’re stuck on a high floor of a tower. The exits are blocked and breaking out the windows would be effective suicide. There are two other people stuck here. One of em is obviously not human, and the other gives a non-human vibe.”

“A non-human vibe,” he echoed with a tone of faint disgust.

I was preparing to lose all credibility. “I know this is gonna sound weird, but I’ve made myself familiar with the ins and outs of souls. As a result, I can tell when a soul has been fractured or dented or splintered or nearly any other unfortunate circumstance that might befall it.”

From his facial expression, he was not accommodating what I was telling him.

“My own soul has been through more bumps and bruises than most," I continued. "But the person out there, her soul is in worse shape than anything I’ve ever seen.”

He had returned to scanning every inch of the room. For a moment, I felt a shot of horrendous fear. I had wanted for Sherlock and I to partner up in the minutes before he had awoken. Evidently I’d had more staked in that hope than I’d realized, and now I felt myself consumed by concerns over the opinion of a man I had just met.

“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked.

I paused. “You don’t think I’m crazy, then?”

“Firstly, I have heard far worse. Secondly, I must admit this situation is rather bizarre, and it’s making me feel more open-minded than usual.” He gave me a reassuring nod. “For now, I am just trying to learn as much as I can from this room itself. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to learn.”

He was right. The walls were a lighter green than the bedcovers, with a watercolor-like effect to them. The ceiling was bright and intricately patterned, and the floor was a dark, polished wood. Aside from all of that, the only things to be found in the room were a mini-fridge (which Sherlock opened and found to be empty) and a very old-looking desk.

“That being said,” Sherlock went on, “I still haven’t heard if there is anything more you feel I should know.”

“Oh, yeah. There’s a dead body.”

“Dead body?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t gotten a good look at the body because… she was looking at it, but I tried to remember what I could. “A man, shot in the head, two rooms down from here.”

“Hm.” He opened the door to the hallway. “I feel the need to take a look at it for myself. Given the likelihood that the killer is among us, I would advise you to join me in the interest of your own safety.”

“You won’t have to ask me twice,” I said.

The hallway was uncomfortably sterile, with white walls and a smell of bleach clinging to every molecule of air. Our footsteps barely made a sound. The only thing in the entire hall that didn’t feel like blankness was a hanging picture of a mariachi band.

“Mind the bird feces,” Sherlock said.

“The what?” I looked down in time to see a pile directly in the middle of my foot’s intended destination. I managed to throw my foot forward just enough that I didn’t step in it. “Bird feces. Gotcha.”

“Ah, you’re finally up!” a voice called. “I was starting to worry we had two dead guys instead of just one.” The individual greeting us was the one who definitely wasn’t human. A small, multicolored imp with what appeared to be red-orange hair behind her rune-emblazoned helmet.

“…Greetings,” Sherlock said, taken aback by her appearance. “I’m Sherlock Holmes, and this is J—this is Dirk Strider. Who… might you be?”

“Eee hee!” The imp cackled. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“After the events so far today, it certainly would be much less implausible.”

“Oh, no.” She tutted at him. “It sounds like we have a skeptic of everything even just a little extraordinary. Do you really want your life to be that boring?” She performed a midair twizzle, coming to a stop with her arm casually at rest on his shoulder. Her hand came up, a series of red sparks played between her fingers, and small, square objects materialized and began revolving around her hand in rhythm with the spinning of her finger. “I’m more than capable of miracles, Sherlock. Would you like to see a few?”

“Hearing your name is the one miracle I’d be interested in at the moment,” Sherlock said.

She sighed and drifted away from him. “Fine. I’m Midna. Is that better?”

“Marginally.”

In the next instant, Midna was in my face. “Hey. You aren’t talking much. Something wrong? Cat got your tongue?”

“I’m overwhelmed by the realness of your magic,” I responded. “Unlike Sherlock here, I would be down with further demonstrations.”

She gave me one of the most genuine smiles I had ever seen – a real, sharp-toothed fuckin grin. “Well, if I had to guess, I’d say you have a few tricks of your own.”

As I’ve already said, there were things about this new place that didn’t jive with the logical syntax of the multiverse with which I was familiar, and between my earlier observations and my impressions of Sherlock and Midna, I was starting to suspect that I had somehow breached the border of the fourspace that had loosely contained my life up to that point. This place and the people within all came from entirely separate versions of reality, a concept which I had previously believed to be synonymous with Paradox Space. The reason I say this is because I realized that with what Midna had just said, an opportunity to test my theory was presenting itself in perfect form. If I was right, she might not be familiar with the concept of a Strife Specibus.

I willed my katana to appear in my hand. “How does this look?”

“I like it!” Midna said. “Not that you’re the only one here who can conjure things, but it’s always nice to see someone else who can pull it off.” She made a number of objects of her own styling appear one by one in her hand.

“Oh, now you’re just showin off.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

I smirked and cleared my throat. “The booty you summon is certainly lush, but you don’t get the chance to enjoy this _Crush_.”

A two-liter of Orange Crush flew from my sylladex, landing in my other hand. I put my sword away and took a swig.

“Well done, well done,” Midna said. “Do you have to rhyme to get whatever it is you want?”

“I have to rap.”

“Oh, please,” Sherlock finally cut in. “You call that a rap?”

“I had to make do with what I got,” I retorted. “You try making a better rap about Orange Crush.”

He looked for a moment like he was considering the challenge. “I think it would be prudent if we went ahead and looked at the body.”

“Oh…” Midna seemed crestfallen. “The body?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Is there something wrong?”

“I was just hoping to avoid the person in there with it.”

Sherlock nodded. “That person already seems to have an unfavorable reputation. Would you mind leading the way?”

Midna floated to the side towards the closed door, and fazed through it. Sherlock opened the door, and the two of us walked in. Sure enough, the body lay on the floor in just the same way as I had last seen it, and _she_ hadn’t changed much, either.

In fact, she was still gazing at the dead man, as if she were attempting to form an imprint of his face with her mind. She had oversized, murky eyes of the kind one would expect to find on the stars of old silent films. A rosy shawl draped over her shoulders and down the length of her frilly white dress, and her scarlet hair was in a few braids at the top, but mostly fell loosely to the small of her back. To complete the ensemble, she daintily gripped an ornamental parasol that matched her dress in every possible way.

“Oh!” she gasped as we walked in. “I am… I’m sorry. I’m feeling awfully shaken up from finding this…”

Sherlock ignored her entirely and began inspecting the body.

“My name is Dahlia Hawthorne,” she continued.

“Sherlock Holmes.” He didn’t take his eyes off of the body.

“Please… can you tell me what’s going on here? I feel so—"

“I have had more than my fair dosage of wily women,” Sherlock said, glaring at her. “Allow me to at least complete an analysis of this cadaver before I’m forced to judge your character any more harshly than I already have.”

Without missing a single beat, Dahlia turned to me, tears in her eyes. “How unfair…” she whined. “What am I supposed to do now?” She stepped forward and took my hand, at which I recoiled as violently as I could.

“If you’re trying to woo me, you should know that I would be considered by your modern vernacular to be homosexual. Not to mention I’m around eighty percent sure you’re a demon.”

Her livid facial expression only made me more convinced she was a demon. She spun slowly towards Midna and opened her mouth.

“Don’t even try it, crazy bitch,” Midna snapped.

I had really hated to use the term “homosexual” for myself, since I never felt like it was an appropriate label for my orientation, but it was close enough; anything was preferable to Dahlia Hawthorne touching me ever again.

Sherlock straightened himself. “The bullet was fired from about a meter away. The gun, a .35 caliber pistol. The bullet has exited from the back of his head, but it’s not in the immediate vicinity. I can’t say much about the victim or why he’s here with us. He’s approximately as nondescript as they come.”

The deceased man was around forty-five years old, with a receding hairline, wearing a red shirt and black pants. I had to agree with Sherlock, he looked about as entertaining as an MST3K watch of a fishbowl.

“Now, next I would like to take a look in the closet over there,” Sherlock said. He marched toward the door, as Midna and I trailed behind. “Here’s hoping for something good.”

He opened the door. Within: more super fresh bird shit, boxing equipment, and a video cassette of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn for some reason. Sherlock stared at the droppings for a moment, then his eyes followed a trail in the direction of the body, which I imagined was a visualization of some kind.

“Why is that…?” I could hear him muttering. Midna and I exchanged puzzled glances.

Sherlock looked directly at me. “Mr. Strider, I must tell you, as it stands, you are the most likely perpetrator of this crime.”

“What?”

“What?”

“Yes,” Dahlia said. “Yes. That sounds right.”

“Hey now,” Midna shouted. “On what kind of authority do you say something like that? I think this guy’s decent enough. I vote the demon lady did it.”

“I second that motion,” I said.

Sherlock made a gesture of frustration and hobbled back to the body, leaned over, and lifted the head. “Look,” he said, pointing to the back of the skull. “Exit wound. Hm. And as you’ll see, it’s only slightly taller than the entry wound. Now. This man is relatively tall, as is Mr. Strider.” He took a few steps so that the body was between him and the closet. “If Mr. Strider were to shoot him in the forehead from about here—“ he pantomimed the holding of a pistol—“he would not have had to hold the gun at much of an angle. Hm? Had the considerably shorter Ms. Hawthorne been the shooter, I suspect the differential in the height of the wounds would be quite a bit larger.”

At this point, I felt my faith in him may have been misplaced. “That ain’t proof by even the shoddiest definition of the term.”

I wanted to point out that with Midna’s ability to float around the way she does, she could have just as easily shot him at the correct height, but I didn’t want to throw her under the bus, since she was the only one of the three who was on my side. I figured anyway that Sherlock must have ruled her out for some other reason.

“Regardless,” Sherlock said, “we’re dealing in a rather limited pool of suspects. I’m happy to continue trying to find facts about this case and our situation, but at the moment Mr. Strider is the most viable suspect. Barring a protective detail to prevent the rest of us from being murdered, it seems wise to restrict his movement until the status quo changes.”

“Change the status quo ourselves,” Midna said. “I understand. That’s a good idea there.” Her grin once again exposed her pointed incisors. “Come on, Dirk. There are only so many rooms in this place. I’m sure we’ll find something.”

“Hahhhhhhh…” Sherlock was even more frustrated than before. “Ms. Hawthorne, if you would be so kind as to assist me with my own investigation.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Dahlia said, closing her eyes and smiling sweetly.

I had the sensation of my throat swelling with rage and disgust. The process had been roundabout, but in the end, Dahlia Hawthorne had won the trust of Sherlock Holmes, and at my expense.

Midna and I started in the library, which lay between the bedroom and the body room. “Alright,” Midna said, looking around the room. “We could be setting ourselves up for a painful lesson in tedium, but one of the books on these shelves could be a switch of some kind.”

“To a hidden door? You think there’s a chance of that?”

“Yep, exactly.”

“That would be so beautiful in its horrendous absurdity. I’m cheerin for it to be true.”

“Well, we’ll have to pull every book to make sure.”

“I’ll help you with that in a second.” I’d noticed a fireplace on the left side of the room. Strange thing to have in the middle of a soaring tower. I stuck my head into the fireplace and gazed skyward, removing my shades. A distant pinprick of light danced several stories above.

“Good news,” I said. “If all else fails, we can climb up this thing.”

“Aa-ha-ha!” Midna responded. “Climb. As wonderful as that sounds, I’m planning to stick to non-contact movement, thank you.”

I brought myself out, dusted myself off, and approached the bookshelves. “You know,” I said, “you could just leave now.”

“Yes,” she said, “but then where would that leave you? I’m the only one stopping Sherlock and Dahlia from ganging up on you right now.”

“I appreciate that.”

“As long as you promise you weren’t the one who killed that guy.”

“I promise you that much.”

“Good.” Again, Midna showcased her razor-toothed smile. “Now help me check these books. And tell me about yourself.”

I started systematically nudging books. “I’m a puppet-lover, a robot-building savant, and a writer of pornography of the highest class. I dunno, I’m not a fan of describing myself with concrete concepts most of the time, so those are about the main things I’m willing to admit. Oh, and I’m a Prince of Heart.”

She seemed pleasantly surprised. “Is that so? I’m not very eager to say much about myself, either, but just so we’re on even ground, I’ll let you know that I’m a princess, too.”

I thought of telling her that my title of Prince probably didn’t mean what she thought it meant. It was not a rank, but rather a classification of my abilities. I didn’t really do anything to earn my title. But, then again, neither does most royalty.

_Click!_

Midna hit the jackpot. The leftmost section of the bookcase swung open.

“Hm, what do we have here?”

There was only one thing in the dark, damp section within: a tiny bird, with an orange head, gray body, and black tail feathers with white stripes. It looked directly at me and began chirping.

“Ugh, pointless,” Midna said. “Let’s look in another room.”

I was transfixed. “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll stick around for a moment.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

She left the room, and I leaned down to get a better look. “Hey, little guy,” I said to it.

It began chirping more wildly and flapping its wings. I’m not an ornithologist, but there was no way in my mind the emotion it was expressing wasn’t anger.

“Whoa! Are you maybe not a guy?”

The chirping and flapping died down.

“A girl?”

The bird responded with a few affirmative-sounding tweets.

“Can you understand me?”

The same pattern of tweets as before. I took it to mean yes.

“May I pick you up?” Again, she made the same sounds. I reached out and gently grabbed her, then made for a bloblike green chair and sat with her perched on my knees. I noticed a small tag on her leg, which read “I am a Fletchling! Please take good care of me!”

“Hello, Fletchling,” I said, “you remind me a lot of someone I know.”

“Chi-chii?”

“Her name is Roxy. She’s a very good friend of mine. Possibly the best I have.” I began softly rubbing the Fletchling behind the neck. She seemed to enjoy it, but her eyes were open and she still looked as though she were listening. “Roxy Lalonde… she’s a hero by every definition of the word. She’s part of the same convoluted effort I am to preserve reality – or, rather, what I used to understand as reality. And here we are in the middle of all of that, and she also takes time to help me through my own shit.”

“Chiiirp.”

“Yeah, see, I’m just coming off of a breakup, and the end of that relationship was a long time coming, but it was hard for me to see or accept for the longest time. Roxy was there, though. She validated my emotions at every turn and never made me feel like the fuckstick I was almost certainly being. She was vigilantly running friendships with me and with two of the other most screwed up people in paradox space. Plus she was working through demons of her own. She beat a goddamn addiction while we were gallivanting and saving the multiverse. How amazing is—how amazing is that?”

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I tried to hold them back. I smiled weakly at the Fletchling. “Roxy is the most incredible human being out there, in any world. She’s kind, she’s patient, and she’s everything I’ve ever striven to be. I wish she could know how truly amazing I believe her to be.”

“Chi.”

“Yeah. And if I had the chance right at this moment, I would want to let her know exactly how I felt.” I nodded, more to encourage myself than anything.

“I would want her to know that I love her.”

At that moment, the lights in the room went out. Spooked, the Fletchling fluttered back behind the bookshelf. With lightning speed, I turned and spun to the door. In the frame stood the silhouette of Dahlia Hawthorne.

“Son of a fuck.”

She no longer held her parasol. Instead, what looked like a dagger lay limply in her hand. It may have been my imagination, but I could also swear I was seeing her eyes start to glow. I brought out my katana once more as she stepped forward.

“Did you see that lovely little bird?” Dahlia asked.

“…Yes?”

I couldn’t see, but I could almost taste her disgusting smile in the air. “The poor little thing must feel so trapped in here. Seeing it brought back memories of someone. An ex-boyfriend, named Terry. Would you like to know what happened to him?”

“I’d be willing to guess you killed him,” I said, starting to back away.

“Nothing quite so simple that time,” she said sweetly. “He killed himself, to save me, after I had already betrayed him twice. Can you believe that? There was a moment when I saw how deeply he cared for me, and for half a second, I may have cared about him, too. Then I found that he wasn’t nearly the only person who was broken and beaten enough to become so devoted to me. People left and right of me are at my feet, begging me to give them a second of attention.”

By now, I was certain her eyes were glowing.

“So for me to now be the punching bag for your derision and the ridicule of everyone else here… It puts me off.”

She lunged at me with her dagger. I parried with the katana and tried to bring it around to her neck, but she was way faster and stronger than I would have expected. She deflected the swing and took aim for my gut. It proceeded like that, block after block after block, and by now there’s no use even pretending she might have not been a demon. I took a swing at her arm, she dodged to the right and smacked my arm down with her left hand, I brought my sword back, but she had taken a step back and was pointing her weapon at me menacingly.

“Why did you kill him?” she asked.

“What?”

“The dead man. I didn’t kill him, Sherlock was asleep, and Midna could have used magic, so you’re the only one who could have done it. Why did you?”

I hesitated. “You sure you didn’t do the deed yourself?”

She scoffed in my face. “Of course I didn’t. But if you want full disclosure, I have killed two people directly, blinded a man, and played a role in three other deaths, plus I ruined so many lives that were just filled with potential, so right now I have the more robust career.” I could feel the air change with her smile once more. “I can satisfy myself with that knowledge,” she said. “At least I’m better than someone at this.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Liar!” She lunged at me. I wasn’t prepared for it.

The sword fell from my hand. I was cornered. She raised her knife for the death stroke.

Next instant, my vision went black. I had the sensation of my body dissolving. When my vision came back, I was at the other side of the room. Dahlia was sparring again, this time with… Midna.

I don’t know how Dahlia could have ever expected to win that one. Midna was flinging a constant slew of magic sparks in her direction, and was every bit as nimble and more. Not to mention that the one time she allowed Dahlia to get anywhere near her with the knife, she phased through it and reappeared on the other side of Dahlia. Her hair extended, formed the shape of a hand, and slammed Dahlia against the wall.

“What is your deal, anyway?” Midna shouted.

No response. Dahlia had been incapacitated. The Fletchling flew back out of the hidden chamber, landing on my shoulder.

“Ugh! What a mess!” Midna exclaimed. “I’ll be back, Dirk, I have a pile of stuff I want to look through. Keep an eye on her for me.”

I picked up my katana and pointed it at Dahlia. “That won’t be a problem.”

Midna was back in just a few moments, dumping a heavy load of potential evidence onto the floor. “Alright. I’m gonna see if I can make anything of this.” Lots of shuffling and clinking went on in the next few minutes. I didn’t look at Midna; I was watching Dahlia vigilantly, because I believed in the mantra of never turning one’s back on the unconscious demon body.

“Ugh, none of this makes any sense,” Midna complained after a while. “The books in this room, these decorations from the shelves, none of it is connected at all. It’s like somebody took the most random objects they could find and threw them together in a big mix.”

I absentmindedly began stroking the Fletchling’s neck again, resulting in a contented chirp.

“And then there’s that bird. Where did that thing come from?”

“I dunno,” I said, “but I find it entirely adorable.”

“Okay, I can see that. It is pretty cute. Sure doesn’t talk much, though.”

“Hm.”

At this point, Sherlock arrived in the doorframe, but he said nothing, I barely noticed him, and I’m not sure that Midna noticed him at all.

“Come to think of it,” Midna went on, “it reminds me of someone I know. A blond, suave swordsman like you.” In my peripheral vision, I saw her floating lazily on her back. “Now there’s a hero. I really need to get back to him. He and I were trying to save the world, you know.”

“That’s been going around a lot.”

“Oh, you too?” Midna righted herself in midair. “Well, in my case, he’s actually been doing most of the work and I’ve been pretending to pull the strings.”

Why did she have to word it like that? I felt a fucking tsunami of guilt in that instant.

“I should let him know how amazing a help he’s been to me, and to my entire race. And just… what a pleasure it is to be in his shadow.”

“I recommend that you do,” I said, turning to her. “I’ve been reflecting on that myself. These things can go unsaid at times when they really shouldn’t.”

“What happened here?” Sherlock asked, finally breaking his silence.

“Dahlia decided to make a mess of the place,” Midna said. “But I like the aesthetic here, so I put a stop to things.”

“I didn’t realize there was any kind of a commotion.” He looked at the wall and stroked it. Was he wondering if the walls there were sound-absorbent?

Then, he looked directly at me. I was expecting him to come at me with an even more firm accusation.

“The sweet and tangy color with no rhyme that won’t describe a lilac or a dime, thrust into a rush of flavor, time to savor, while the neighborly Prince is Crushed.”

“Holy shit,” I said, “you actually did it.” He got points for making his rap more elaborate than a couplet.

“Hmm.” He looked super fuckin impressed with himself. “Would the two of you mind joining me with the corpse? I’ll bring Dahlia along with us.”

We reconvened around the body, my Fletching still on my shoulder. “Have you figured anything out?” I asked Sherlock.

He clapped his hands dramatically and rubbed them together. “The clues left in this apartment tell me absolutely nothing.”

Midna and I sighed in frustration.

“Wait, allow me to finish. The bullet is nowhere to be found, nothing in this apartment has any semblance of logical consistency, and the entire setup consists of dead end after dead end. That is what is so telling.” He smiled at the two of us. “But, admittedly, there was a far more obvious hint just now.”

“Hmm? What would that be?” Midna asked.

“Midna, you were referring to a bird when I arrived in the library a moment ago. What was it you said?”

“Oh, well…” She thought back. “I called it cute, didn’t I?”

“And you said it reminded you of… someone you consider close.”

“Yes. Why?”

“What is this about?” I asked, defensive of my Fletchling.

Sherlock smiled. “Well, let me cast the contradiction here somewhat more directly, Mr. Strider. What are you doing with your hand?”

I froze. I had started doing it again, unconsciously this time, but what did that have to do with anything? “I’m petting the bird on my shoulder. Does it look to you like I’m doing something otherwise?”

Sherlock shook his head, still smiling.

“There is no bird on your shoulder.”

My mind was spinning, which was an expression I had never fully understood until that moment. “What the fuck do you mean, there’s no bird on my shoulder?”

“Well, perhaps I should be more accurate,” Sherlock said. “There may very well be a bird on your shoulder, and in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if there were, but I can’t see it. Can you, Midna?”

“No…” Midna evidently still had no idea what was happening.

“Of course you can’t.” Sherlock looked back to me. “Let me ask you another question, Mr. Strider. Where did you find the bird currently on your shoulder?”

“In the library,” I replied, “behind the trick bookcase.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock said. “Consider for a moment, if that bird was the bird in this flat, and it had been behind that bookcase, how would it have left such newly deposited feces in the wardrobe in this room?”

Whoa, what? “So you’re saying there’s more than one bird?”

“When I heard the two of you commenting positively on the appearance of ‘the bird,’ that is when I put it together. I wondered why you didn’t say anything when a bird emerged from that wardrobe and approached the body, but then it occurred to me that you couldn’t see it at all. And when I was alone with the bird that I solely could see, I found myself talking to it as if it were a colleague of mine, much the same as the two of you apparently spoke to your respective avian avatars.”

“Avatars?” I asked.

“That is what they appear to be. They are in place to elicit emotions from us about someone we consider important, and encourage us to speak our minds about the person in question.” He turned to the body. “This is not a murder scene at all. It is a test.”

The body opened its eyes and looked back at him.

“Well done, Holmes,” he said in a sharp-sounding voice. “I didn’t expect you to figure me out so quickly.” He disappeared, then reappeared by Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Pardon me,” Sherlock said, “I don’t believe we have your name.”

“I am Q,” he replied with a smirk. “Nigh omniscient, beyond omnipotent, and certainly the most handsome god you’ll ever meet.”

I scoffed.

“What?” He glared at me. “Have you met a more handsome god?”

“I _am_ a more handsome god.”

Beside me, Midna snickered with newly purified glee.

“Urgh, you have some of the largest egos of anyone I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with,” Q said. “The three of you should be thanking me. I’ve given you exactly what you wanted.”

“And what is that?” Sherlock asked.

“A chance to clear the air,” Q said in a matter-of-fact manner. “The people you have wanted to state these feelings towards have been watching this whole thing, and are waiting on the other side to discuss what they’ve heard.”

I welled with rage. “Don’t you think it would have been better if we’d told them on our own terms?”

“Oh, nonsense,” Q replied. “Like I just said, you have some of the biggest egos I’ve ever encountered. You’d never say anything like that without my help.”

He may have been right. At the least, I stopped protesting.

“What about her?” Sherlock asked, pointing to Dahlia.

Q shook his head. “I found her in a plane of eternal torment, which I find to be barbaric things. I was giving her a chance to prove she’d learned her lesson. If she had, I would have allowed her to go free. Looks like I’ll have to put her back where I found her.” He looked at the three of us. “And speaking of that,” he said, “it looks as though you will all need to head back soon, as well.”

“Right, right,” Sherlock said. “Please send me back posthaste.” He nodded at Midna and me. “I wish you the best of luck.”

“I appreciate your trustworthiness in the end,” I said to him. With a sharp light, he was gone.

Midna and I turned to each other. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Prince,” she said to me. “It’s just as well that I head off, though. When I left, I had just broken the barrier around Hyrule Castle. I won’t bore you with the details of what that means. Just trust me, we’re at a crucial moment right now.”

“Thank you,” I said, “for your confidence in me. I hope you don’t mind me saying that in this short interval you’ve believed in me more than anybody ever has, save for one person.”

She grinned. “And you’ve been more of a model of a man than anybody, save for one person.”

“Please take care of yourself, Midna.”

“I will. See you later!” In a flash, she was gone, too.

“Are you ready to head back, Strider?” Q asked.

“I am,” I replied. “Wait, no I’m not. I have one request for you, Q.”

“I can likely provide it.”

“Can I keep the Fletchling?”

He seemed surprised. “Well, that Fletchling really did its job as your so-called avatar well, if you want to keep it. I don’t see why not.” He waved his hand. “The Fletchling is yours.”

I was transported away, onto a path of some kind in empty space. The Fletchling was standing next to me.

“Hello, Fletchling.”

“Chiiirp!”

We walked down the path together. On the horizon, I could see the form of the Sburb logo: the door back to my home multiverse. And quite a bit closer, there she was.

“Roxy,” I said. “I’m sorry abou—“

“Shush!” Roxy took my hand, clasping it in hers. “I love you, too!”


End file.
